Board Tech Inexperience Hampers Insurer IT Embrace: Novarica

March 2, 2016

Technology, CIO, CTO, information technologyInsurers speak loudly these days about embracing information technology as a tool to help grow their businesses. It turns out, however, that there is a disconnect: Their boards of directors are often wary to support tech improvements and rarely understand why IT matters on a corporate level, Novarica asserted in a new report.

Importantly, that disconnect between corporate policy and understanding and support from insurance industry boards of directors can have ominous implications for future growth, the research and advisory firm said in its executive brief on technology and corporate governance in insurance.

“Without an understanding of the opportunities that technology presents, boards tend to focus on what they do understand: risk and cost,” Novarica President and CEO Matthew Josefowicz and study co-author said in prepared remarks. “This may be leading insurers to underinvest in transforming their technology-enabled capabilities.”

Among Novarica’s findings: 93 percent of insurer boards of directors have no tech experience among their board members, 71 percent of boards don’t appreciate the importance of technology, and 89 percent of boards don’t know what questions to ask about the issue.

This disconnect has led to “a board governance structure that manages technology as if it were a risk, rather than a potential competitive advantage,” Novarica said in its report.” That quality needs to be reversed, Novarica said, recommending that insurers add technology experience to their boards and create board-level technology committees to increase the use of information technology and promote better understanding at the board level of how it benefits corporate competitiveness.

Here are some of the major findings of the Novarica study:

Novarica said it will address this issue further during a March 28 webinar.

Source: Novarica